Literature of Budi Darma

 BUDI DARMA LITERATURE

 

According to Budi Darma, literature has 3 genres, Tragedy, Comedy, and Novel ( Slice of Life). Tragedy contains a higher life than every human world which includes humans who are great, noble, or high degrees, comedy contains a lower life than every humans world which include humans who are lowly, disabled, or half-animals , and novel contains ordinary human life and ordinary daily life (slice of life) . One of his ideas is "The World of Somersault" which is like overturning the concept of philosophy (rationalism and empiricism) and this idea is usually expressed in several of his works. In an essay he wrote in '68 "Is Literature World Upturned", literature is a world of possibilities that is open with words that contain many possible meanings (polysemic), interpretations that can change according to subjective moods and thoughts, and describe things that do not yet exist. And if explored again, the overturning can be related to objective (conformity between statements, existing knowledge, and empirical) and subjectivity (mismatch between knowledge, statements, and facts).

 

In various essays by Budi Darma, literature is often mentioned as a field of intellect. In literature, we cannot aspire to lower our intellectual capacities. Literature is an intellectual exercise , and we aspire to increase intellectual capacity (1973) and also intellectual ability is one of the important requirements to become a good writer (1981-1982), quotes from Budi Darma in several of his essays which wrote literary works must have the intellectual ability to understand the literary work itself and is a requirement to become a good writer. Later, he also elaborated more clearly that intellectuals are not technocrats, even though technocrats are intellectuals, just like what we do is not necessarily in accordance with intellectual qualities . In this case, Budi Darma tends to place the meaning of intellectualism in terms of abstraction and thinking abilities, not seeing involvement in community problems as part of intellectual work. However, in some criticisms, literature as an intellectual field actually places the author as a part of society and is not merely a call for the author to produce the best possible work (understanding the dynamics and issues around them as well). However, Budi Darma has a statement that can be used, namely "The writers who are actually talented and persistent, are forced to not have a good atmosphere for writing" .

 

From the previous one, it can be continued, "Without obsession it seems impossible, because, in essence, obsession is what requires the author to write. It is also the obsession that leads the author to enter various question marks or mysteries of life, and it is the question marks or mysteries of life that will bring the author to the theme ", - Budi Darma ( Prosa, 2003 ). Budi Darma once said in Solilokui (1983), that literature essentially conveys the complexity of a combination of pain, amazement, and serenity with the meaning of "pain" which is the feeling of the reader when following the characters in a work who experience repeated disasters ; “amazed” when the reader feels amazed by the characters so very noble, like angels without flaws; It's “serenity” how the author and the reader both get a nostalgic element, where they have experienced the same thing but not exactly the fate of the characters. However, unfortunately , Indonesian works are incomplete in terms of their elements, some are only “sick”, sometimes just “amazed”, or just “joyful”, very few are able to combine these three elements in one work.